Moving volleyball coaches' education online: a case study

Traditionally, volleyball coaches’ education has been conducted physically in the gym and classroom, but due to Covid-19 and the actions needed to contain the pandemic, that was no longer possible in the spring of 2020. Instead of canceling the already planned course we decided to move the course online. The development process was guided by the question if we can teach volleyball-specific skills online. As a result, we designed a fully online blended learning course with a problem-centered approach and authentic video-based tasks. A total of 23 prospective coaches took part in the course. Skills acquisition was measured using a pretest-posttest design revealing a large effect of our design on skills acquisition. Additionally, we surveyed participants attitudes towards the learning design. The results show that prospective coaches were satisfied with the design and perceived the online learning course as useful for volleyball coaches’ education. Based on the results, we can recommend the combination of videos and interactive content to provide authentic problem-centered tasks to facilitate skills online in volleyball coaches’ education.